There’s a little football pitch up on the fifth station of the Santa Marta morro, in the Botafogo neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro, where a group of Brazilian children who live in the favela are playing against some visiting Argentinian youths. The local kids hold a white ball, worn and battered, and they have challenged the Argentinians, saying if they win they will take their Fifa Brazuca football as the prize. The midday sun shines on the dry top of the morro, where the view of Christ the Redeemer on a nearby mountain top, and the undulating bays of Rio flanked by hills, literally stuns – can such beauty be humanly possible?

The Argentinian group comprises 14 reporters, editors and correspondents from La Garganta Poderosa (The Powerful Throat), a co-operative magazine project carried out by a youth collective from various Buenos Aires villas (the Argentinian term for marginal neighbourhoods, or even slums), which has become one of the most interesting, disruptive and innovative media “startups” around. Writing in rhyme – a sort of slum-rap postmodern version of cockney slang – they often interview footballers and tend to get the best quotes and insights, probably because they share a history and an understanding that traditional media often do not.

La Garganta Poderosa is covering the World Cup from the favelas and have recruited ex-Argentinian international René “El Loco” Houseman to travel with them to provide insights. Houseman, who grew up in a villa, has claimed he scored goals while completely plastered at times. From a makeshift newsroom in Santa Marta they are filing stories about how the Brazilian people are living this World Cup while also sending their young reporters to investigate child prostitution, retail price fixing , and political protests. With one accredited journalist who covers the games from the stadium, they have also reported on a Brazil match from the favela where the legendary Adriano grew up, and organised a friendly match in the better known Cidade de Deus, which gained international notoriety in the movie of the same name.

They resent the glamorisation of such portrayals; their aim is to restore dignity and reclaim the voice of the people who live in these conditions, doing away with the stigma and labels that have been thrown their way by society. “We started as a social project, the construction of popular assemblies, through football,” says their editor, “so football lies at the heart of who we are.” They don’t sign the articles with bylines, and the idea is that the work is anonymous, cooperative and voluntary. Their ethos is one of integration, with women involved at every level, including the playing field, and their outspoken political agenda, among other things, combats police brutality – all too common where they live – with concerted campaigns.

Having rejected all forms of commercial sponsorship or business investment for this World Cup coverage they are being funded instead by Clacso [a Latin American social science thinktank] who explained in an editorial in El País why they’re doing this: “Understanding football is a way of understanding popular culture; there is an oppressive football which aims to colonise the hearts and minds of the poorest people and sometimes succeeds, but there is also a liberating football which, like an emancipating dynamite, shudders the popular soul, filling it with affirmation and pride.”From the heights of the Santa Marta morro in Rio de Janeiro, La Garganta Poderosa is telling the story of this World Cup in a way that reflects the power and the joy of the game hand in hand with the social and cultural realities in which it exists. How many can boast as much?